News

February 18, 2008

Beowulf Mining Starts Drilling at Ballek

By Rob Davies

Sweden has long been known as a well mineralised country. Beowulf Mining is one of the latest companies to try its luck there. Chairman Bob Young told Minews that drilling started on its best Swedish prospect at Ballek on 5th January. Ballek, he says, is an IOCGU (iron oxide-copper-gold-uranium) target that shows some similarities to BHPBilliton’s massive Olympic Dam property. He makes this comparison following discussions with Ian Duncan, chairman of Energy Ventures, which is the largest shareholder in Agricola, Beowulf’s sister company and joint venture partner in Ballek. Ian Duncan was formerly general manager at Olympic Dam so he ought to know what he’s talking about. On the deal he has negotiated with Beowulf, Agricola could end up with a 70% stake in Ballek. That would arise if it spent an additional $500,000 on exploration in addition to funding this year’s programme. But in the meantime, Agricola will earn 51 per cent from funding this year’s programme of nine drill holes and 3,300 metres of drilling. The keenness of both partners is demonstrated by the fact that drilling has started already in early January when the temperature is as low minus 26 centigrade.

Although the deposit has been known for a long time it is only recent geophysical work that has given the partners the confidence to start drilling.  In the 1980s twenty or thirty holes were drilled by the Swedish Geological Survey. These were used to define a resource of 5.1 million tonnes at a grade of 0.73 per cent copper, 0.25 grammes per tonne gold Au and 7 grammes per tonne silver, although those numbers are historic and not robust enough to meet current JORC standards. The most...